Route reliability record
CLT→ECP
Charlotte to Panama City
- Flights
- 1,106
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 437 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 1,106 CLT to ECP flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Best time to fly CLT to ECP: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 84.4% of the time and Wednesday flights 83.6%, against 76.0% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
76.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,089 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.18%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
PSA
75.0% on time across 960 flights
These figures cover 1,106 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on CLT to ECP
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlinesthin sample | 50 | 92.0% | 67 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 96 | 78.1% | 54 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| PSA Airlines | 960 | 75.0% | 75 min | 1.35% | B |
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Charlotte to Panama City
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 2 of the top 3 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. CLT → ECPCharlotte to Panama City | PSA Airlines | 74.0% | 75.0% | 1.35% | 8am–11am, Wed (route) | — |
| 2. CLT → VPSCharlotte to Valparaiso | American Airlines | 73.6% | 74.4% | 1.09% | 11am–2pm, Wed | AA 2909 15:18 |
| 3. CLT → VPSCharlotte to Valparaiso | PSA Airlines | 69.3% | 72.9% | 5.00% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 34 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am1 flights—
- 8am–11am364 flights84.4%
- 11am–2pm87 flights78.2%
- 2pm–5pm261 flights76.8%
- 5pm–8pm116 flights50.0%
- 8pm–5am277 flights74.5%
Scale runs 40% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 50.0% on time, against 84.4% for the 8am–11am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 364 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter CLT to ECP by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On CLT to ECP, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 84.4% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 50.0%, a wide gap of 34.4 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am84.4%
- 11am–2pm78.2%
- 2–5pm76.8%
- 5–8pm50.0%
- 8pm–5am74.5%
best all US flightsScale 40% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 47 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
July is the worst month at 48.2% on time, 47 points below October, the best at 95.6%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. June was the busiest month here, with 120 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 83.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 62.8%, a spread of 21 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 19,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 11%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 11% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 1.8 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 19,180 reported delay minutes.
44% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 19,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 to one.
Cancellations sit at 1.18% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.36%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
10.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 437 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 83.2% on time across 1,105 flights, 7 points above this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,106 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in ECP after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. October runs 95.6% on time and July 48.2%, a swing of 47 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,089 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLT to ECP questions
How often is CLT to ECP delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 24.0% of the 1,106 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is CLT to ECP compared with the rest of the country?
76.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of about a point against it. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on CLT to ECP?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 84.4% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 50.0%, 34 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are July delays on CLT to ECP?
July is the weakest month at 48.2% on time, compared with 95.6% in October. Across the year that is 47 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- ECP to CLT — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- CLT to MCO, a related route71.6%
- ATL to ECP, a related route83.2%
- CLT to ORD, a related route72.4%
- American Airlines on-time record92.0%
- Envoy Air on-time record78.1%
- PSA Airlines on-time record75.0%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. CLT to ECP and ECP to CLT are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.